In my philosophy class, I told the students that we would be asking a lot of questions about the meaning of life to determine if we can agree on the right answers.

The questions kept coming, but the answers only led to more questions. That’s philosophy by definition.

I began my course by introducing Socrates, who was called the wisest man in the ancient world. He would walk the streets of Athens, Greece, and engage in stimulating conversation with young adults. His presence created quite a following. Socrates’ major principles in order to live a worthy life were the pursuit of virtue and wisdom through self-examination and critical thinking.

He is best known for what is called the Socratic method in which a series of questions are asked in an effort to find an answer that can be accepted as a personal truth. His method of interrogation is the core curriculum in law school. Using Socratic questioning, an experienced attorney can get a witness to contradict his own testimony.

Here’s an example of the method, with a teacher asking questions to his student.

T: Tell me, what is a friend?

S: It’s somebody that you share a lot of interests with. For me that is Tony.

T: Is it then that a friend can never be someone who doesn’t like what you like?

S: No, you can still have a friend for other reasons.

T: What reasons?

S: Somebody who can help me do things that I’m not good at. My friend Jake helped me put up a new deck at my house, but we don’t do much together because we don’t share a lot of the same interests.

T: So, a friend can be someone you don’t hang out with much, but provides you with services?

S: That’s about right.

T: Anything else?

S: Oh, a friend is someone you can tell a secret that you want nobody else to know. That friend for me is Ron and he’s the only one. I know he’s got my back for whatever I do or say.

T: So, if you told Ron that you just committed a major crime, would you expect that he wouldn’t tell the police because he’s your friend?

S: That’s right.

T: Is it possible that you can have a friend that does not like to do what you do, has no skills to service your needs, and one whom you could never trust with your secrets?

S: I don’t really know. I don’t think so, but that’s not my problem. I get to pick my own friends.

T: Who becomes your friend or not your friend is determined strictly by what you want in a friendship. Is that correct?

S: That’s pretty much how it works for everyone.

T: But if that’s how it works for everyone, could it also be true that it might not work for anyone?

S: What do you mean?

T: Take the two of us. Let’s say I see interesting qualities in you so I’d like to be your friend, but you don’t particularly like me because I’m annoying you with all these questions, so you don’t want me to be your friend.

S: What’s your point?

T: I have been challenging your convictions about what makes a friendship to see if you really believe in your own ideas. You just said you get to pick your friends, but why did you not consider that a friendship is a decision made by two people, not just one?

S: I didn’t think of it that way. It does take two to make a friendship. Someone has to like my qualities to want to be my friend. I get it now.

On the streets of Athens, Socrates asked many young adults questions about social injustice that were critical of the laws of authority that gained him an increasing number of followers. This was disturbing to the governing body of Athens.

In 399 B.C., Socrates was arrested and charged with “impiety and corrupting the youth.” He was convicted by a jury of 500 men and was given the choice to admit to the crime and pay a fine, which would save his life, or die by ingesting poison.

In considering paying the fine or accepting the death penalty, he used his own method of questioning paraphrased in these words. “Which punishment is greater? To die with self-truth or to live a life of a lie that poisons my soul? He then told the jury that he deserved to be rewarded and not punished because he was an advocate for free speech. They were shocked by his comments and dismissed what he said as a viable defense.

Socrates chose the death penalty. He drank hemlock in prison that poisoned him to death. The wisest man in the ancient world is most remembered by two statements, written down by Plato, one of his students. The first is, “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”

His point was that we need to question everything, but that leads to the understanding that knowing nothing is better than the acceptance of what is an unchallenged and so called truth from others.

Socrates also said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Self-truths help us understand ourselves and what we want out of life

Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “Believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see.” Wisdom is not attained by listening to what others tell us or not determined by what we see with our eyes.

In today’s world, we are politically divided, and many of us blindly accept the rhetoric of either side. If Socrates were alive and used his method of questioning for the loyal supporters of each political party, he might come away from them and say, “The only thing I know is they know nothing.”

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com